The Factory St. Pete - 6.5 Acres of Weird
Six and a Half Acres of Weird - The Factory St. Pete and FloridaRAMA
A car-dynasty heiress with an art habit, an architect who went door-knocking, and a technologist who'd run with Meow Wolf turned a window-film plant into the Warehouse District's biggest experiment — a 90,000-square-foot campus crowned by Florida's own immersive fantasyland.
The Warehouse Arts District's founding generation worked building by building — a packing plant here, a laundry there. The Factory St. Pete thought bigger. At 6.5 acres and roughly 90,000 square feet across multiple warehouses on Fairfield Avenue South, it is the district's largest single creative campus: a hive of artist studios, galleries, design shops, music spaces, markets, and event venues, wrapped around an anchor tenant that has become one of Florida's most talked-about attractions — the immersive art experience now known as FloridaRAMA.
The origin story is pure Warehouse District folklore. Around 2019, Liz Dimmitt — cultural strategist, arts-board fixture, and managing partner of the Dimmitt automotive dynasty — was hunting for a warehouse to house an immersive art concept she'd been dreaming about for years. Her friend Kara Behar of Behar Peteranecz Architecture, whose firm had helped pioneer the district, did what neighbors there do: went knocking on doors. At the Madico window-film plant, the answer was almost comic timing — the company was putting the property on the market that night. Behar made an offer before it ever listed, and the campus that became The Factory ended up owned fifty-fifty by the Behar and Dimmitt families. Work began in 2020 on what the Catalyst called a 6.5-acre cultural hub — a home for artists, arts nonprofits, and creative businesses, with fifteen thousand square feet reserved for Dimmitt's dream.
Fairgrounds: Florida as Fantasyland
That dream needed a technologist, and the St. Pete Arts Alliance's John Collins made the introduction: Mikhail Mansion, an artist and creative technologist whose immersive-exhibit résumé included work with Meow Wolf — the Santa Fe collective that invented the modern immersive-art industry. Dimmitt hired Mansion's consultancy; within weeks the consultant had become co-founder (along with Olivia Mansion, who took communications), and together they built Fairgrounds St. Pete, which opened in the late summer of 2021 with a mission statement worth quoting whole: art for all, play for all, joy for all.
The premise was a stroke of regional genius. Where other immersive attractions conjure generic dreamscapes, Fairgrounds made its subject Florida itself — the weird, wacky, wonderful state — telling original Florida stories through themed environments built by dozens of commissioned artists (sixty at opening; more than seventy-five today). Visitors wander a choose-your-own-adventure world anchored by the Mermaid Star Motel, a South Beach-deco roadside motel the team fabricated from scratch, through post-apocalyptic Everglades, spaceship gaming rooms, and shell-grottoed chambers — one of which Dimmitt tiled herself, pressing Florida seashells into wet grout alongside her mother, recreating the shell room of her childhood. Hidden narratives and scavenger-hunt mysteries reward repeat visits; discreet QR codes serve the art-curious without breaking the spell. And the economics were designed as deliberately as the sets: featured artists share in ticket revenue, an arrangement that turns every $27 admission into arts patronage. Dimmitt's own summary of the model doubles as the campus philosophy — "we're creating the stage," she told the attractions journal Blooloop; the artists "bring the magic."
The 2024 Turn: New Owners, New Name
The campus's second act arrived in May 2024, when The Factory was sold to new owners — with a structure that kept the founders' hands on the art. Dimmitt stayed on as the campus's art director and retained ownership of the anchor attraction, which took the occasion to rebrand: Fairgrounds St. Pete became FloridaRAMA, a name that says the mission out loud. The change confused exactly no one who'd visited — the Mermaid Star Motel still glows, the admission structure held ($27 adults, $25 for Florida residents, military, students and seniors, $22 for kids, free under four, timed entry Thursday through Monday) — and the programming has only accelerated.
Today FloridaRAMA operates as three things at once: the immersive experience; a free art gallery showcasing local artists (no ticket required — a detail visitors routinely miss); and one of the city's busiest event venues. The calendar tells the range: an eight-wall retro-futuristic mural unveiling by Tampa's Ashley Cantero, interactive theatre staged inside the exhibits by American Stage, Creative Loafing's Highball cocktail competition, a Winter Pride drag race, family Day of Play festivals, the Tampa Bay Black Art & Film Festival, monthly markets — and, this very week, the "One by One" 12x12 art exhibit and a ticketed FloridaRAMA fashion show with The Sonder Atelier on July 11.
The Rest of the Campus
FloridaRAMA is the headliner, but the Factory's supporting bill is a small arts district unto itself. Heiress Gallery, in Building 7, runs a serious contemporary program of emerging and mid-career artists with a stated mission of artist equity. Scratchboard artist John Monteiro, design studios like Scott Andrew Fischer's, Groovehaven Music, and a rotating cast of flex-studio tenants fill the warehouses; the St. Pete Indie Flea sets up on campus; and the exterior walls carry district-landmark murals, including Ricky Watts's sunset piece painted for the 2021 opening. (World-renowned balloon-sculpture artist Jason Hackenwerth keeps a studio around the corner on Terminal Drive — this pocket of the district rewards wandering.) Campus gallery hours run daily with late Fridays and Saturdays, "event-flex" in the Factory's own honest phrasing.
Why It Matters
The Factory and FloridaRAMA represent the Warehouse Arts District's third model. The first generation was artists buying their own buildings (McClellan); the second was the artists' association buying land collectively (WADA). The Factory is the patron model — private capital, deployed at campus scale, with an artist-payment structure and a local-first ethos built into the business plan. It brought the district something it never had: a true mass-audience attraction, the kind of place that draws families from Orlando and conventioneers from Tampa who would never otherwise cross 16th Street — and then hands them a free gallery of local art on the way out. Purists can debate whether an immersive fantasyland is a gallery; the seventy-five working Florida artists cashing checks from its ticket revenue have settled the question to their own satisfaction.
Go on a weekend, buy the timed ticket, and give it three hours. Do the free gallery. Find the shell room, and know that the founder and her mother grouted it by hand. In a directory full of institutions that turned warehouses into art, this is the one that turned a warehouse into Florida.
Visit: The Factory St. Pete, 2606–2622 Fairfield Ave. S., St. Petersburg (Warehouse Arts District); campus gallery hours Sunday–Thursday 11 a.m.–6 p.m., Friday–Saturday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. (event-flex). FloridaRAMA (Building 5) open Monday, Thursday, Friday noon–8 p.m., Saturday–Sunday 10 a.m.–8 p.m.; timed tickets $27 (discounts for Florida residents, military, students, seniors, children); free gallery and event calendar at FloridaRAMA.art or (727) 210-5450.
Sources: St. Pete Catalyst; Tampa Bay Times; Blooloop; Creative Loafing Tampa Bay; The Gabber; St. Pete Chamber; Atlas Obscura; FloridaRAMA and Factory materials.
